It is! And if you look closely, at the start of the battle there’s prompts for the X/Y/B buttons in the lower right which, on an english screenshot, were “Hint”/”Cheer”/”Run Away” iirc.

Cheer sure as hell sounds like a return of Thousand Years Door-style audience-wooing mechanics.... and Hint sounds like a return of…

It does! Plus what’s notable is not what’s “new” but... what isn’t.

And by this, the closer I look at details on the sideline, the more I see we might be indeed seeing a stealth return of classic Paper Mario gameplay against all expectations the first look give.

The circles manipulation threw me off for a while, but…

I.... think you actually got what you wanted there, even if without realizing it. As in, when looking closely the battle system seem less weird than it looks.

The ring manipulation is just one phase of action. What follows after, with the action menu lacking any set of cards whatsoever but only having “Hammer” and…

Judging by the leftover space for more potential actions, I think there’s indeed going to be more options or even skills as you progress. Perhaps even a return of badges you equip to determine what additional skills you bring to battle?

Also TTYD-style audience seem to be back and I’m sure I saw an english screenshot…

Actually I think you just use the same in-game coins you get from stomping enemies with your attack judging by the prominent coin counters. And that timer seem exclusively active only for the phase of the battle where Mario is seen rearranging the rows of the circle... meaning that once you’re done setting up the…

I could be wrong, but the time seem to be specifically active during the lane manipulation? The timer ends specifically as soon as the player is ready to make their action which means that by then you have all the time you want to choose what skill/etc to make use of..

Action menu also had only “Hammer” and “Jump…

The lack of DKC/Mario RPG/etc makes me wonder if we may not actually have some surprises left on that front.

After all, why release the “old” if there could be a possibility of releasing a “remake” later down the line? Mario RPG feels unlike now that we know Paper Mario is a thing this year... but at the same time…

Honestly this. Levels “components” are nice for sure, but what was missing was a level -progression- mechanic to have a mean of chaining levels into a fashion where the player can register a form of progression while they play. I found more enjoyment just from some of the rushedly uploaded worlds today, and being able…

Honestly I’d wondered if we’d ever get DLCs, but it makes senses that if DLCs were ever planned that they could end up held off to specifically release only *after* World Maker would have been officially released, so as to fully benefit from the structure it still gives that wasn’t there before.

For an example, while I…

True but I suspect custom worlds may indeed shake things up. It might help de-incentivize “impossible tricks levels” and think more I term of “Worlds that can be completed from World 1 to World 8" with actual ramping up of difficulty from easier to difficult rather than jumping straigh to impossible trick levels.

I could be wrong but I suspect that if extra styles get released they might be exclusively DLC and may simply be held up because they wanted to release this update first.

And the funny thing is i’m not even sure they won’t end up releasing DLCs “extra styles” -after- this final “major” update.

Honestly this is kind of an humbling sight. Not that this is a surprise at this rate.

I feel this is something a LOT of people had a feeling was the case for a lot of things when it come to Steam these days.

But seeing it put into an actual graph as it is.... just... wow. It puts very much an image to the -scale- of how…

You’re assuming he’s self-employed and do this out of passion and not because he’s likely got a boss forcing him to do this.

Have you ever looked how he finally breathe with *relief* and stop the ‘happy’ jumping around as soon as he thinks the player is out of sight?

This is the behavior of someone who does this because…

First party Direct is most likely “June”. And not just because that was the date of E3, but rather because Nintendo’s first party schedule seem like the first half of the year(perhaps to let people recover from the holidays?) being very slow with sparse releases and things only starting to pick up in the summer to the…

And because of the fragmenting market, most of these services will be dead in the 2-5 years of operation.

Honestly I might not be able to play current day AAA on my Switch but at least I can play the single player games I own on the go without being limited by a mobile data cap or lack of connection in the middle of…

But don’t you get it? You don’t own “games” anymore. You own “licenses” to games and apparently the publishers decided that this “license” meant you can’t choose which streaming platforms you can stream them on(unless you purchase, again, the “license” that supports playing on stuff like Stadia/etc).

And people asks me…

Basically.

Plus... the whole ‘pulling from platform so you can’t play it anymore’ has backfire potential if they’re not careful?

Because they’ve just shown how easy it would be for players to lose access to “games they already paid for” even on those OTHER platforms, which is a really good way to hurt players…

You just can’t catch him at all.

I think one of the issues that’s sometimes sidestepped when it comes to console horsepower is that... yes, the horsepower do allow for tons of NEW stuff previously impossible.

But at the same time, it also sidesteps the fact that there is still need to be game studios out there producing games actually pushing hardware…